Joan Abrams obituary

Tuesday 10 November 2009 13.35 EST
First published on Tuesday 10 November 2009 13.35 EST

When she turned 80, my mother, Joan Abrams, decided to get arrested. A lifelong political campaigner and peace activist, she had until then indulged only in the most minor civil disobedience. But in June 2007, she set off to stop the traffic at the Trident naval base at Faslane in Scotland. She failed to achieve her aim that day – disabled as a result of a major stroke 12 years earlier, she was unable to lie down quickly enough. It was a rare lapse. Over the years, her work for the many causes she espoused had been little short of phenomenal.

Joan, who has died aged 82, had politics in her blood. Her grandfather, a foreman cooper in a Manchester soap factory, had been a founder member of the Independent Labour Party and the co-operative movement. Her grammar school headteacher discouraged her application to Oxford in 1944 on the grounds that her views were too leftwing, provoking the retort from Joan's mother that she thought they were fighting a war so people could continue to express their own opinions.

Joan duly "went up" to St Hilda's College to read English, where she joined a group of socialists headed by the Guardian journalist and economist GDH Cole, and campaigned for Labour in the 1945 election.

Joan went on to work as a careers adviser in London, where she met Tony through the Fabian Society. They married in 1956 and two years later became founder members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

The family later moved to Greater Manchester, where Tony worked as a lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and Joan as an English teacher. Both remained committed to politics. After retiring, their involvement in the peace movement grew, with Joan representing Greater Manchester on the CND national council until her death. They were also stalwarts of the United Nations Association, the co-operative movement and many other related causes. Although Joan's relations with the Labour party became strained during the Iraq war, she was still chairing constituency meetings just a few weeks ago.

Joan's other passions were literature, art – a hobby she took up late in life – and sailing. In 1955, she helped found the Dinghy Cruising Association (DCA), a group of foolhardy seafarers who enjoy making long journeys in very small boats. In 1986, after retirement, she took her boat on a six-month cruise around the Greek islands. Even after her stroke, she remained a regular attendee at DCA rallies and editor of the association's bulletin. After her death, a DCA member wrote: "I sailed with Joan only once ... her method of boarding my boat from an inflatable dinghy consisted of a sort of 'western roll' over the gunwale into the cockpit. This unorthodox entry left her bleeding from a cut to the head and me very alarmed!" At Joan's funeral, the word "indomitable" kept cropping up.

She is survived by Tony, her sister Nina, her children Judith, Julian and myself, and five grandchildren.